OK, now being in design I love a good font. I’d say I’m passionate about typography. But being in web design we, until today, have been limited to using only system fonts or an image for a headline which search engines are not that big a fan of and printing can be problematic. This is why every website has one of the 3-4 of the same looking fonts. Font replacement has been around for a while but it requires scripts and has issues with certain browsers. The wonderful people at Google have given us a new solution. ”The Google Font Directory lets you browse all the fonts available via the Google Font API. All fonts in the directory are available for use on your website under an open source license and served by Google servers.” What does this mean for you the client or artist? The face of the web is sure to change in the very near future as Google is sure to expand their library and the world will certainly take advantage of these fonts.
Will be able to add our own fonts soon? I for one, am very excited. This is definitely BIG news for us graphic and web designers. Oh and you web developers who don’t have acess to lots of fancy fonts? You just got a huge helping hand. THANKS GOOGLE!
Check out the article here: http://code.google.com/webfonts
Lee
May 20th, 2010
You may also be interested in cufon which lets you use ANY font (assuming you have permission to do so) on your website without flash. It’s pretty easy to setup, and is light weight compared to other Flash based solutions like sIFR.
Here is a link to the cufon site:
http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/
Here is a link to a tutorial on how to use it:
http://net.tutsplus.com/articles/news/the-easiest-way-to-use-any-font-you-wish/
admin
May 20th, 2010
I’ve used Cufon on a few wordpress sites. It’s pretty easy and works OK. I think what I’m looking forward to the most is what Google is going to do with it in terms of its users and customization. Will we be able to add our own fonts in the library? How nice would it be to login to your Google account, set up a new project and add the fonts? Also, I love how they show the character sets of the fonts and the interface in general of the font library. It kind of reminds me of Extensis Suitcase for font management. The biggest difference between Google and Cufon is that Google can easily bring it to the masses. No doubt, it’ll be interesting seeing the two duke it out.
You know there is a WordPress plugin that does title text replacement for TT fonts? http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ttftitles/ I’ve used it successfully in the past too.
Thanks for the additional info Lee.